Old Ghosts
by Land of The Delta Blues
Summary: A man long assumed dead has returned to wreak vengeance and chaos on SAMCRO.
1. Chapter 1

**Plot Line: **Galen smiled and before their eyes a dead man stepped out of the shadows.

**Inspiration: **After Jax mentioned Jimmy O'Phelan to Galen during their conversation during Wolfsangel it reminded me how much I miss my favorite SOA villain and I started wondering what would happen if Chibs had failed to kill him during NS and he came back.

**Spoilers: **The fanfiction is going to follow this season with some added plot lines of course.

**Rating: **T for well what the series usually has.

**View Point: **Third person

**Disclaimer: **Sons of Anarchy is not mine.

* * *

Despite the stab wounds having avoided all of his internal organs it had been a long road to recovery. Of course there had also been the time he'd had to spend convincing the Irish kings that he was now a changed man. It was all a lie, he was still the same man he'd been before Filip Telford had attempted to murder him but he knew he had to do anything he could to get them to allow him to work with the gun trade with SAMCRO again. Of course he was under Galen now which was less than desirable and to stay a ghost he had to stay away from his wife and stepdaughter, but it would all be worth it by the end of today.

He had been waiting for this day for months...the day when he'd finally get to see the look of shock and horror on Filip's face as he seemingly emerged from the grave. From inside of the barn he watched as the motorcycles approached. There were three of them, Jax Teller who seemed confident as ever as king, Filip who had been named Vice president and Happy Lowman who Jimmy was sure would have been an honorable soldier if he'd been on the other side. However, he was sure that all three men would soon get the biggest shock of their lives and would suddenly no longer be interested in abandoning gun running.

Now however, he had to wait and listen.

He watched as the three bikers and Galen along with two of his other men met in the center of the yard.

"Where's your truck?" Galen asked the blonde biker with an air of distaste that Jimmy could even hear from his hiding spot.

"There ain't one coming" Jax responded seemingly with an air of cockiness that had only gotten stronger since the last time they'd met. He could already tell that this arrogance would lead to serious problems for the young biker and although he knew that he would cause some of the problems, he wasn't the least bit apologetic.

After a pause Jax added "We can't take anymore KG 9s Galen, I already told you that. We got too much heat."

The next man to speak was Galen's right hand, a fool of a man who always seemed to think he was telling some great joke "you don't have to take them, just pay for them."

He could hear Filip say something to Jax, but due to the man's thick Scottish brogue he couldn't actually understand the words, however in response to them Galen glanced in his direction and the two men briefly made eye contact. The time wasn't right for the bikers to see him though, so he sunk further into the shadows as the other man turned back to Jax.

Jax seemed to take on his good boy tone "look, we get pinched with the guns we're dead, and then you got nothing."

Galen turned again, this time not quite making eye contact before responding "Have your So Cal charter take the KG 9s. We can fold them into our next shipment."

There was a pregnant silence before Jax spoke again "San Bernadino voted down the guns."

"That's unfortunate, the kings are all set on the idea of doubling our business here. Looks like that burden falls on you now. You're not getting out of guns son. Cause needs you. Greater good." eventhough he couldn't see Galen's face as he spoke, Jimmy could immediately tell that the comment was meant as a promise that harm would come to the club if the biker tried to back out.

However, the promise seemed to have no meaning to Jax who just snorted and shook his head. "You know why my old man wanted out?"

"Don't know. Don't care. Lifetime ago." Galen was beginning to respond with an arrogance that matched Jax's.

"Yeah it was, but nothing's changed. JT realized there's nothing more dangerous than a gangster who thinks he's got God in his pocket." the insult to the IRA cause was obvious, but when Galen only laughed in response Jimmy reigned in his urge to make his presence known and continued to listen from the shadows. "The cause may have been the greater good at one point, but for guys like you, Jimmy O. It's just killing people with Catholic bullets to lighten your own pockets."

He would never admit to being nervous in that moment, but the second Jax mentioned his name Jimmy briefly wondered if somehow the biker knew he was hiding and watching. However, almost as soon as the thought entered his mind it was gone, almost nobody knew that there really had been associates of his waiting. Of course he would have preferred if they'd arrived before he had his near death experience, but as he'd laid on the side of the road unconscious, presumed dead his men had came in and retrieved him, leaving the old cop knocked out. Charming PD had wanted nothing more than to sweep the IRA incident under the rug so that had worked well to his advantage. There was absolutely no way Jax knew he was alive.

Galen chuckled at Jax's comment "It's kind of funny that you'd mention Jimmy O'Phelan right now. You know, we had a talk recently."

Much as he expected, Filip, ever the hothead lunged at Galen "What do you mean you've talked to Jimmy?"

The offer to at least partially reveal himself right then was too tempting to resist and briefly he stepped out of the shadows right as Filip glanced in his direction, making eye contact with the other man almost as a taunt. Although he stepped back into the shadows after mere seconds, the Scotsman was already lunging towards where he'd been standing.

"Chibs, what the fuck are you doing?" Jax spat lunging towards the older man.

"He's there. He's in the barn!" Chibs stopped moving now panting as Jimmy took the opportunity to escape through a backdoor.

"Who?" Jax asked grabbing the older man's arm.

Chibs whirled around so fast that Jax stumbled backwards and fell to the ground "Jimmy!"

"Chibs, Jimmy's dead...you killed him." Jax managed to regain his footing as he spoke.

In the background, Galen let out a chuckle and Jax turned to glare at him "What's so funny?"

"I didn't know it was so easy to trigger Filip." the Irish man immediately returned his expression to one of seriousness.

"We're leaving now. Until I decide if we take the KG 9s keep your hands off my club!"

"Aye, hands off." Galen responded with fake sincerity.

Chibs spent the drive back to Teller Morrow stewing. He knew that what he had seen in the barn wasn't a figment of his imagination. The taunt in Jimmy's eyes had been all too real and there was no way he would have imagined his nemesis with faint facial scarring that mirrored his own. He wasn't a man who believed in ghosts either, but he had a feeling he'd just seen one.


	2. Chapter 2

Right now Jax couldn't be angrier. His vice president had diverted from the group to head back to Teller Morrow due to hallucinations of a dead man and to top things off Tig and Ratboy's excursion into the neo-nazi camp had gone horribly wrong.

"Chibs is smart enough to know that Jimmy's dead. He shouldn't have let Galen's bullshitting spook him." Jax fumed to Happy as they dismounted their bikes and approached the other club members.

"Maybe he's been hitting Juice's weed." Happy responded.

By the time Happy finished speaking him and Jax had gotten close enough for the other group to hear part of their conversation.

"Who's been hitting my weed and where's Chibs?" Juice asked puzzled.

"Chasing a phantom." Jax snorted before addressing the problem at hand. "What happened?"

"Some of their crew spotted Juice and Darby after we got on the inside." Tig answered.

Jax sighed "God damnit, Juice."

"We got out whole, but he..."

Darby cut into Juice's speech "But now they're coming after me and Reyna."

"I'm sorry man." Jax glanced at Darby's wife, who was now standing on the steps, as he spoke. "Bring her to TM. We'll keep you safe."

Before Darby could respond Reyna shook her head as if to say it was definitely a refusal. Darby however seemed to consider the offer for a few seconds before rejecting it. "Nah, this is on me. It's my wreckage. Just a matter of time before this went down. I gotta handle it."

"How big was this crew?" Jax asked turning back to Juice, Tig and Ratboy.

"I only saw five guys." Ratboy responded.

"Yeah, the guys that took us had the nazi hooks but it didn't look like an organized effort." Juice added as Jax heard his phone go off.

Immediately he recognized Filthy Phil's number on the screen. Phil and V-Lin were at the gun warehouse, but he couldn't imagine what reason the large prospect would have for calling.

"What?" Jax offered as a greeting.

"A warm hello to you too Jackson." the voice at the other end offered. Jax immediately felt a chill go down his spine when he recognized the accented voice.

"Jimmy." he released the name almost like a poison. "Where are you?"

"Galen and I are at your warehouse. I'm afraid your club is down two members, or two prospects anyway."

"What did you do to Phil and V-Lin?"

"You'll see soon enough...and Jackson, you will take the guns or I will make sure your club loses even more members and I don't think you can afford such a blow. Put Filip on the line please, I think we have quite a lot to talk about."

Instead of responding, Jax immediately slammed his phone shut and stormed back towards the group.

"Who was it?" Juice asked reading his expression of anger and confusion.

"Jimmy O'Phelan."

"That's impossible." Juice returned.

"I wouldn't believe it myself, but Chibs saw him when we met with Galen. That's why he took off, he got spooked. I thought he was just imagining it, but I know who I talked to."

"Did he say where he was at?"

"The gun warehouse." Jax paused "He claimed to have hurt Phil and V-Lin. I'm going to go check it out; Happy, Tig, Juice you're with me. Rat, stay with Darby and Reyna."

"Do you want me to call Chibs?" Juice asked racing to keep up with Jax's footsteps.

"No, I'll have a talk with him later about this. Right now we need to find out what happened to Phil and V-Lin."

When the four motorcycles pulled up outside the building labeled Oswald Lumber Jax almost felt like maybe he had spoken with a ghost. That was until he saw the blood trail leading up to the closed doors.

"Phil?" he yelled not expecting an answer after what Jimmy had insisted over the phone.

"V-Lin?" Tig added to the yells.

Each man drew their guns and apprehensively Jax opened the large doors with the other bikers trailing close behind him. Lying on the ground were two SAMCRO cuts with their own gory message plainly left on them. Lying on each of the cuts were the hands of their of respective owners. Jax could hear the flies buzzing and smell raw rotting flesh before his eyes even panned up to see the mutilated corpses of the prospects. Immediately he knew the mutilation had to be Galen's touch, Jimmy seemed to have a weak stomach for the disfigurement of corpses and had probably been standing outside chatting with him whenever the prospects were being chopped up.

The group spent a couple of minutes just staring at the corpses before Jax spoke again "Happy, Juice you put them in the crates, we're going to give them a proper send off...I need to go talk with someone."

Back at the clubhouse Chibs was sitting at the bar. He knew he should be out with Jax and Happy and by now he had managed to convince himself that what he'd seen possibly had only been a phantom created by Galen's words. However, he'd look foolish to just go hunting for the other two men around Charming so he sat and downed another whiskey hoping that he'd soon be able to get the taunting phantom of a face that had leered at him from the shadows out of his head. That was until Jax burst angrily through the doors of Teller-Morrow pushing a crow-eater who happened to be in his path aside so hard that the woman fell.

Chibs got up from his stool to meet the younger biker halfway across the room "What was that about Jackie?"

"You knew he was alive!" Jax stormed glaring at the Scotsman.

"Who the bloody hell are you talking about?"

"Don't play dumb on me Chibs, you conspired with him. He probably told you that if he died his goons would hurt your wife and daughter, but you didn't think about how stupid it would be in the long term! Your lapse of logic just cost Phil and V-Lin their lives! Their blood and the blood of anybody else he kills is on your hands!"

It took Chibs a matter of seconds after Jax's speech to realize what the president of SAMCRO was talking about "This is not my fault! Do you think I'd want that bastard alive?!"

"I don't know Chibs, I just talked with a man that my VP assured me was dead...but he's obviously not is he? Opie, Piney, Kozik and Unser saw you kill him, but you pulled one hell of a hoax before their eyes! I don't even know if the club can trust you anymore, but I can't afford to lose another member! Otherwise the club would be voting on if you'd keep your patch!"

Glaring, Chibs watched the president walk away. As much as he was beginning to to develop a strong distaste for everything the younger man did and said, he knew the only way to make sure his nemesis really was put in a grave was to at least pretend to follow along with Jax wanted.


	3. Chapter 3

The night air was damp and a bit cold for California, but Chibs barely noticed the chill he was so intently focused on the small airport in front of him. Although it was literally the bleakest of hopes maybe if he caught somebody like Jimmy or even Galen trying to leave tonight he could prove to Jax that he wasn't in on some big scheme or at least the recently reborn nightmare would end for him.

Ratboy was sitting passenger in the van, but the prospect was currently silent. Earlier he'd made the mistake of trying to make conversation by commenting that the older biker seemed to be more eaten up by the current situation than the other club members. It had been an innocent comment, the younger man hadn't starting prospecting until after he'd "killed" Jimmy but Chibs was in no mood to talk about what was going on. Instead of providing an answer he'd lit another cigarette and purposely blew smoke in the prospect's face.

Everything seemed to be dead for the time being so he checked his watch. In Charming it was 11:30 PM. He paused taking a few seconds to calculate the nine hour time difference. It would only be 7:30 AM in Belfast, but over the madness of the past twenty four hours Jax had watched him like a hawk. Eventhough the younger man knew he had family in the UK he had a feeling that any call placed overseas in the presence of the biker would be assumed to be to his imaginary associates in the IRA. However Jax couldn't have possibly given the prospect orders to monitor him without looking like the paranoid fool he was becoming. This meant now would be a safe time to make his call. Even if it hadn't, he knew he couldn't go through this madness much longer without reaching out to contact his wife. It wasn't just a matter of how much calmer he always found himself after talking to her, this situation could very well mean that she too was in danger.

"What are you doing?" Ratboy asked eyeing the phone as Chibs took it out of his pocket.

"What's it to you prospect?" Chibs snapped before apologetically mumbling "personal call."

As expected after ringing multiple times the phone was picked up with several groggy swear words in both English and Gaelic which he listened to with growing amusement before cutting them off "I hope you haven't taught our daughter all those nasty words Love."

After he finished speaking the tone of the voice at the other end changed "Is something wrong? It's awful early for you to be calling."

He'd hoped he could hide his emotions for a short time and just catch up before being forced to tell the real reason for his call, but she knew him far too well and had immediately noticed his attempts at joking were strained. "Yeah Fi, something's wrong."

He could immediately hear the worry in her voice "What is it Sweet Boy, are you hurt?"

Chibs took a deep breath before speaking again "has anything strange happened to you or Kerrianne? Have you seen anything or anybody that didn't seem to belong?"

He could the sound of footsteps at the other end and imagined she was pacing back and forth across the bedroom as she tried to answer his question "what is this about?"

"Please think Fi, this is important." he paused to take another drag from his cigarette continuing to watch the airport as he waited for her answer.

"There was something." Fiona paused before speaking again "but that couldn't be important."

"What is it?" he jumped on the comment, knowing that with a dead man alive even the most seemingly meaningless of events could have meaning.

"Somebody broke into our flat last week."

He couldn't help but feel a bit enraged that he hadn't already been informed about the incident "why didn't you tell me this before?"

"Because it didn't make any sense Filip, the thief only took our wedding photo. Why would they do that?"

"Shit!" Chibs swore so loudly that in the passenger seat Ratboy jumped and turned to glare at him.

"Filip, why would they take our wedding photo?" the confusion and worry had deepened in Fiona's voice and her normally calm demeanor seemed to have turned to near hysterics as she seemed to sense how deep what was about to be dropped on her was.

"He must have had one of his henchmen break in and steal it."

"Who? What's going on?"

"Jimmy is alive. He killed two of the prospects. I'm scared he'll go after you and Kerri next. I don't want to lose my girls again Fi."

There was a sharp breath intake at the other end of the line "You said he was dead Filip."

"I thought he was. I...I stabbed him. I spit on his corpse." he hadn't intended to choke up, not with Ratboy riding passenger, but discussing what was going on with Fiona was like a catharsis and he couldn't help himself and he could feel the lump form in his throat as he tried to swallow his tears to avoid looking foolish.

"I know Love, I know." even though they couldn't touch through the phone from her tone of voice it was almost as if she was there in the van holding him in her arms. He could tell that the thought that he'd been involved in some sort of horrible cover-up had never crossed her mind.

He paused trying to catch himself before his accent combined with his tears caused his speech to sound like muffled gibberish. "You have to be careful Fi. Don't trust anyone and don't even let Kerrianne leave the house by herself."

There was a long gap of silence at the other end of the line and for a moment Chibs wasn't sure what to expect until Fiona spoke again "What are you going to do Love?"

"When I catch him I'm going to kill him. I'm going to make sure he's dead this time. Until then, until I know for sure my girls are safe nothing else matters."

As soon as he hung up the phone Ratboy turned to glare at him, mouth open almost to the point where it seemed as if his jaw would hit the floor.

"What the fuck are you staring at boy?" Chibs asked the prospect.

"You have a past with the man who killed Phil and V-Lin don't you?"

Despite still trying to stop his crying Chibs almost managed a chuckle "I think that's a huge understatement."


End file.
